


We Are All Going Forward

by Lindra



Category: I Remember You - Fandom, Korean Drama, 너를 기억해 | Hello Monster
Genre: ji-an is so important, posting from the afterlife, this drama killed me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 08:20:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4557489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lindra/pseuds/Lindra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Talks are had, decisions are made, chances are discovered. It's been a long day for Cha Ji-An and it's not over yet. </p><p>Because I thought episode 16 needed a little more than what we got. Picks up from the end of episode 15.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fojee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fojee/gifts).



> We are all going forward. None of us are going back. (Richard Siken)

Sunbae Son doesn't run over, but it's a near thing. "Dave!"

"Take him home," Team Leader says. "I'll process this myself." He looks at Eunbok, then at her, and she can see the helplessness even as he reaches for his cuffs then thinks better of it. "Can you take him?"

She shakes her head, too worried for the clamminess of Hyun's skin and the slackness of his face before he collapsed to really speak of anything at all. Sung-joo comes over. 

"I'm calm now," he says, glancing at Eunbok, who just stands there, face straight as a cartoon, and doesn't look at anybody. "I mean -- anyway, let's see if it's anything serious." He's the one of them that most recently took first aid certification other than Eunbok, so she allows it while the others watch. "Seems okay. Just ... " He grimaces. "Seems like he just fainted of a sudden. I'll take this side."

She doesn't know who to call once they're on the ground floor and out of the elevator and for some reason this means she calls Attorney Jeong, waiting on the line once the secretary passes her over to the hold music. There's really no-one else to call that she can think of. Hyun is such a lonely person.

"Jeong Sun-ho," she hears, and thinks that it's probably the first time she's felt relief at the sound of his voice. He terrified her just a little ago, and the memory prickles even as she has to trust that he cares about his brother enough to do this for him. Them. She's not leaving Hyun alone, not like this.

"Something is wrong with Hyun and I don't have a car to get him home and everyone can't because of an incident," Ji-an says. Well. She didn't mean to say it all like that, but now she has. They won't lend her a police car, either; Hyun's a consultant and a civilian for all intents and purposes, including vehicle availability. One of the officers said they would drive them home, but she doesn't want any other police officers anywhere near Lee Joon-young, not even on the same block. So, Attorney Jeong it is.

"Wait out front," he says, so crisp and bitten-off he sounds like a bad radio, and there's a very large, heavy pause in her ear before he speaks again, voice softer. "I'll be there soon."

Somehow he's there half an hour later, in the car she remembers from when he drove her home, and he looks even more stiff and slick than usual when he helps her carry Hyun to the car and insists on buckling him in himself.

Ji-an gets in beside him, taking his limp fingers in one hand and tearing the other through her hair.

It's been -- it's been a whirlwind, is what it has been, and she's still shocky with the realisation of what she was seeing on the roof, what Hyun was saying about Eunbok, how her heart thumped with rage when she pieced together the prospect of losing part of her team. Eunbok is ... still part of the team. She doesn't know how to feel about it, or about anything.

"You also need a day off, Detective Cha," Attorney Jeong says. When she meets his eyes in the rearview at a traffic light long enough to make her look up she finds him wearing Joon-young's intelligent withdrawal. No too-wide eyes, no deliberate menace, but she has the memory of his malice still under his skin. No, not even malice. Just the threat of the possibility of what he could do to her with that indifference. Yes. Indifference.

He could have hurt her very badly last night. She thought for a minute that he was going to, truly going to, and his grip on her wrist was startlingly strong. He could have hurt her and he wouldn't have cared.

"Yes," she remembers to say. "I do. I..." Well. She might as well. If he's going to kill her, he's going to kill her, isn't he? Perhaps he doesn't know Eunbok at all. They likely didn't all meet. Some of them wouldn't know about the other ones. "Eunbok, a member of my task force team. He killed the Planning Officer." Ji-an checks Hyun's pulse. It's not what she'd like, but nothing worth a hospital. Maybe it was just too much? She doesn't know, but it only occurs to her now that Hyun was holding a gun and she hadn't paused to think he might use it on any of them.

When he wakes up she's going to tell him how much she believes in him. Cocky jerk, for sure, but not a monster. Not like that.

"That doesn't seem like something to cause this," Attorney Jeong says, with that contemplative lightness she doesn't trust, can't trust. It doesn't just muse, it weighs, and no-one has the right to weigh another person's life like that. No-one.

Ji-an sighs. "There was a gun in the incident and he picked it up, and --"

"Ah," he interrupts, the long, slow fake-realisation that already makes her grind her teeth when she hears it. "So that is it."

Ji-an's about to demand that he explain himself when she takes a closer look at his face. "You're driving, so I'll wait," she says. "But you're going to explain when we get there."

"Of course, Detective Cha."

Ji-an isn't all that surprised when a few minutes later Attorney Jeong silently pulls over. Likely a murderer or not, she guesses he wouldn't risk an accident with his brother in the car. Which is something. Tiny. A tiny something, but something.

It says a lot about how desperate things are in her life that safe driving is a sign of comfort even when Attorney Jeong twists in his seat and looks at Hyun with a face so haunted and terrible that she wants to throw herself between them and tell him to stop.

Instead: "What is it?"

His eyes stay fixed on Hyun like he's mesmerised by the way he breathes. "He didn't have to remember. I told him." He lifts his chin, still terribly focused. "If it happens that I am busy, you will look after him. Right?"

"Yes," she says automatically. "Ah, wait. What are you talking about?" confused by the way Attorney Jeong looks as though he just walked into a terrible scene and not just his brother drooling in his backseat.

"Later," he says, and turns around, and she listens to the three of them breathe for so long that she's taken by surprise when Attorney Jeong starts the car and pulls into traffic.

When they're at home, Hyun's home, he carries Hyun out of the car. He still won't wake up, even when she pushes him, even when Attorney Jeong calls him hyung. "Aren't you still wounded?" she asks, opening the door with Attorney Jeong's keys. "You were released a few days ago, right?"

"It's fine," he says shortly, and she shuts the door quickly and scrambles to open the bedroom door too. Attorney Jeong's bedroom, but it's the only one on the ground floor and he doesn't pause at all, so it seems like it's fine. After he puts Hyun down he presses his hand to his side. There's sweat on his cheek. "Look after him."

"Wait. Wait. Hey!" She throws her shoulder to stop him from locking himself in the bathroom and wedges in her foot for good measure. "Hey. You're hurt, right? Let me look."

"Detective Cha," he says, like she's very confusing, and she supposes someone used to Lee Joon Young definitely would think she was strange. But that doesn't matter. Hyun cares about him, so it's her duty to look after him too.

"Let me in," Ji-An says. She doesn't just mean the bathroom either.

He sighs. Most importantly, he sighs and lets her in, and she examines him when he lifts his shirt. "Ah, you burst a couple stitches. You didn't have to do all that by yourself." She rummages in the first-aid kit and applies ointment and a bandaid, aware of his eyes on her, the strange quality of his consideration.

Did Lee Joon-young ever do this for him? He must have, she supposes, and she's not sure she likes being like Lee Joon-young in anyone's eyes.

Well, she's not him, and if Attorney Jeong thinks they're anything alike he is definitely not smart enough to be an attorney.

"There," patting the bandage in place. "I don't know when he'll wake up, but hopefully soon. He went down too hard." She pats it again, checking a corner that threatens to peel. His skin is so warm. Strange how easy it is to stop thinking of the people who kill others as not people with skins or blood themselves. It's a good reminder anyhow. "You know why," she says, and gets up. "I saw you in the car. You definitely know something."

He tracks her movements to the last brush of her hand through her hair. It's the same as Hyun and Lee Joon-young. They all watch her like that. Like strays. "I do know," he says. "I know it was self-defense."

"You should tell me more than that, Attorney Jeong." She puts the box back and washes her hands, looks at him looking away in the mirror, how he smooths his shirt and tie with that haunted, haunting look he had in the car. "I'm not asking as Detective Cha. I'm asking as your brother's friend."

"I realise that," and he lifts his chin the way other people shake themselves, takes a breath. "Shall we have tea?"

She has a mug of jasmine in her hands in short order, Attorney Jeong moving around like he's lived here forever and not just a couple of days, and she wonders if Hyun changed anything at all about the house, if his exactness comes down even to his kitchen being the same as when he left it twenty years ago. He offers her salt, and she takes a quarter-spoon, just a few grains really, stirs it in. It doesn't taste like it's twenty years old, though, and when she looks up he's watching her.

"Ah, it's good," to break the iciness. "So, you said it was self-defense, but I don't know what you're talking about. What was self-defense?"

"Perhaps I shouldn't be the one to tell you," he says, but it sounds reluctant, like she's in the interrogation room and he wants to talk but doesn't know how to start. That sort of thing happens sometimes. "It's not something I did. I am just this way."

"Or you can tell me and I can ask him what he thinks, to confirm you are telling me the truth."

His mouth curves. "You still don't like me very much."

"It's not that. It was, but it's not that. I don't like him living so close to the two of you," looking over her shoulder at the house on the corner, just barely visible as a glimpse of red through the kitchen blinds. "I am glad you are out of that house. But he still has a lot of influence over you and it will make things harder for your hyung if you are with him often. Can you understand me?"

Attorney Jeong is quiet for a long moment, and then he sets down his mug and sits straighter. She doesn't know where he gets it from, his posture's so annoyingly perfect to start with. If her aunt saw it she'd point to him as an example of good manners. She should call her aunt, tell her how things are. But ... this first, and she looks back at him, does her best to look trustworthy, like a good detective. This comes first right now.

"I will say a little and you can check if you like, Detective Cha." He picks up his mug. "There was an incident when we were children here. Back then, there was an intruder and hyung protected me."

That could mean anything. She wants dates, she wants a name, she wants time and place nailed down. She wants to know, and then again she doesn't want to know like this. "You think he'll know what to confirm if I ask him about that? That doesn't sound like something he could confirm easily."

"It is specific," Attorney Jeong says.

Ji-an's done enough interrogations to know when someone's not going to give her any more easy information and getting more would break any future chances. That's fine with a suspect but Attorney Jeong isn't an official suspect, just a personal suspicion. He's definitely done things she would arrest him for if she knew about them, if she had evidence, but sometimes the best way to get more information is to walk away for the time being and let them think about it. Ji-an has the feeling Attorney Jeong is that kind of person.

She finishes her tea. "I'm going to sit with him in case he's all right now. You have work to do, right?"

He looks up at her. "Do you really think he remembered?"

"I think," Ji-an says, "whatever it is about that incident, you need him to remember. So he will."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to work out what led her to that confrontation in ep 16. Rough approximation? IDEK.
> 
> Also, still posting from the afterlife. THIS SHOW.

Attorney Jeong brings tea when she finds him and asks again. Turns out he's in the study with his laptop and phone, but the house is open-plan enough that she's pretty sure he heard her when she called out the first time. Hmph.

She doesn't want to leave Hyun alone with those nightmares, and when she asks he also helps her with Hyun's clothes, helps her lift him enough to unscrunch the blanket and tuck him in properly.

"It's been a while," she says. "Maybe we should've taken him to hospital."

Attorney Jeong shrugs. "It took most of a day, last time. Just wait."

"I am really curious," she complains half-heartedly. He's not going to tell her, she knows already.

"Very sorry," he says, with a curling edge of sarcasm that makes her snort despite herself.

What to say, what to say. Ji-an checks her phone when it buzzes. Team Leader. _He confessed. :(_ She can't think about that right now. "Are you working on a case?"

"Yes. I defended a murder suspect yesterday who was then arrested last night. The case is reopened and I need a new defense. The victim was well-known, so it is more difficult." He leans back against the doorframe, hands in pockets. 

She hates that he has such good pockets, his hands go to the wrist. Planning Officer understood. Ji-an thinks of Eunbok again. It was bad on the rooftop, that long climb up the stairs, the fear for both of them, the worry that Eunbok would kill him and make it worse, how it felt to suspect that one of her team would and did murder another of their team and would maybe do it again, the hope that they would find them both alive. But now that he admits to Hyun's suspicions and Sung-joo's it's worse, if anything, this conflict. He should be alive to face justice, she knows that much. But Eunbok was -- is -- a friend, is like a younger brother. Sung-joo must have suspected something too, to tell her what he did, and decided to go to the roof and confront Eunbok instead. She understands that, understands not wanting to think badly of your family.

But she doesn't understand Eunbok. How _could_ he? But too -- _how_ could he?

The Planning Officer, too. How? Ji-An liked her. Pathetic, but there it is. She'd liked the Planning Officer. They'd understood each other about things like pockets on the female uniforms, little things like that. But Lee Joon-young poisoned that from the start, didn't he? Before Ji-an was ever a cop, it was poisoned already.

It's hard. This is all hard. The easiest part of it all is working out that Attorney Jeong and Lee Joon-young had something to do with Son-sunbae suddenly going on about Hyun being psychic and predicting a murder as it happens, and working through it is such a kick in the teeth that she feels herself go hard and cold all down her spine. 

Attorney Jeong must have known it would happen, and told Hyun, for Hyun to know anything about that case. But he's so closemouthed he wouldn't have told alone, would he? No. He would not have thought it mattered. It must have been the two of them, talking about it, him and Lee Joon-young, and Hyun realising it, calling them as soon as he could. She doesn't think he would've left it longer, for any reason. Hyun is not that sort of person. Attorney Jeong doesn't care enough to mention it on his own, that much she knows, but he's already shown that he'll play along with what Lee Joon-young wants. So it must have been Lee Joon-young, playing with them like a cat with a pair of twitching rats. Playing with Hyun. The bastard. She won't forgive him for that either.

"Lee Joon-young," she starts, "has other kids. Hyun told me last night. Like you. Right?"

His shoulders press back. "Yes."

"Kids that he thinks he saved," she continues. He should hear her out, whether he understands her or not. She's going to make him hear her out. That was wrong of him to do. It was wrong of them both. It was wrong of Lee Joon-young and it was also wrong of Attorney Jeong. "Whose parents he murdered, because he saw they were abused, or he thought they were abused. But that wasn't his decision to make. I don't believe it was. I think they are the children of people he murdered, and I think … people love their parents. Children love their parents. Even when they hurt them. Sometimes the side they see is not the good one, but that's not a reason to kill the parent. It's not justice. Justice is my job as a police officer. My job and yours," now that she thinks of it, and actually, it helps just to say it all. "Justice is our job in the eyes of the law. Lee Joon-young is not the law. You understand me, right?"

"Lee Joon-young," with a tone so arid it could just as well be a description of the skeleton they found in that house, "is not someone for you to understand."

"He's not yours either," she retorts. "Look at this, you're a government employee, you work for the department. Why are you even a public attorney when you're talking like this, huh?"

"I already told you," Attorney Jeong says. He actually looks tired, like Ji-an makes him tired. Ha. She's good at annoying both of them, isn't she? Good. They annoy her too. "Justice is your job, Detective Cha, but it's not mine. It's not for me to judge my client. My job is to trust and defend them."

Ji-an twists to face him properly, Hyun's hand warm in hers. "So is Lee Joon-young your client? You trust and defend him?"

"If someone hurts him, then he might be," he says, face going flatter and flatter as he talks, eyes dimming into looking at her like she's a bug on his shoe, some piddly little bit of shell. "Even when it is someone like you that hurts him, there would be an investigation. He is a medical examiner after all."

"I'm not going to kill him," Ji-an says. "I want to catch him. I'm definitely going to catch him."

Attorney Jeong smiles at her, for a moment looking absolutely boyish, contempt sweeping up and off his face with the tilt of his lips and eyebrows. It's light. Sweet. It's an afterimage of what he could have been if he hadn't been taken by Lee Joon-young, and the thought that this is what Hyun sees every day, all day, all these things that could have been _only if_ , makes her heart hurt for Hyun.

"Then, Detective Cha -- good luck."

"Are you going somewhere?" she shouts after him. "Hey!" 

He turns around, spreading his hands. "I should do my job, right? Even if I am a vile lawyer."

Ji-an narrows her eyes at him. "Don't ignore me next time. What if your brother needs something?"

Attorney Jeong makes a face and doesn't say anything when he goes this time, and now she knows he definitely was ignoring her before. Jerk.

Hyun has such horrible nightmares, and she can't wake him up. It's hard to watch, but she stays. She's okay with staying, and she holds his hand and hopes it helps somehow, and the next time Attorney Jeong comes in he's changed out of his suit and tie, looking altogether like a different person with that ridiculous mop and the simple white shirt.

"Nothing yet," she reports. "Just nightmares."

He tilts his head, considering Hyun. "He'll come out of it soon."

"Right, just how often did he do this when you were kids?" she asks, because this calm forecasting is either nerves or actually true. Or probably just bullshit.

"Oh, once." He gives Hyun another look and gestures awkwardly to the kitchen. "More tea?"

"No. If it's soon, I'll just wait."

He makes a soft noise and pads away, silent even in house slippers. 

Ji-an doesn't get the confirmation she wants when Hyun wakes up and sobs, blaming himself so strongly that she can feel the wrack of his guilt through his shirt when she hugs him, can feel how his muscles tense over his bones as though to crack them in penance for -- for she's not sure what, but something he shouldn't blame himself for. She doesn't get the confirmation she wants, but another kind altogether and it's the real answer, isn't it? Not about what Attorney Jeong said, but his importance, the narrowness of the ways things can end from here. That's what she needed to know.

Hyun shouldn't blame himself for Min, he shouldn't take so much responsibility. The responsibility lies with Lee Joon-young ultimately, and Hyun ... Hyun is so very much in the middle. He won't even share it, really, the stupid genius, and the agony she feels in how he sobs against her breaks her heart even as she's glad that he isn't sending her away, is letting her help, asking for it with the clutch of his hands against her back.

Ji-an is a detective, still. She is Detective Cha, and she will do her job. She will pursue justice, because it is right, because criminals need to be caught and held accountable. Because murder is not for anyone to decide, not Attorney Jeong or Hyun, and for Hyun to take responsibility for his brother this way -- that is deciding, too. It is.

She leaves Hyun alone for a bit when he's definitely cried himself to sleep, intending to freshen up and rinse her hair, but the first thing she sees is Attorney Jeong, small in that chair, alone in a tableau meant for three, and all her plans to have a good long soak are abruptly pushed to the backburner.

When she puts her arms around him he tries to treat her like he doesn't care, like there's no meaning in it and she's just being intrusive, nosy, but she knows better because he lets her at all. 

It's easier to call him Min when she can still feel the compact line of his shoulders under her hands, the way he holds still when she tells him to. The way he looks at her with those eyes, listening, stilted with his childish questions as though a tree fallen in a forest can't be discovered by someone who wasn't there to hear it. 

Eunbok is older than Min, she thinks, Eunbok had so much more and so much less and tried to throw it all away for Lee Joon-young. There's a hundred other tragedies in that.

But she, too, has a responsibility. To justice, and the victims and families of criminals, and that is not something she will negotiate for anyone, no matter how much they mean to her or how much of an innocent mushroom they look. She knows how it feels to have a gap, and she is sorry it cannot be filled, but it cannot. These two, they can try to be each other's river, but they are still left with the shores. They can try to be one another's shores, but they are still left with the river. In both scenarios, both cases, Lee Joon-young is the limiting factor.

He was someone Ji-an thought a friend, once. Trusted him enough to nap in his office and complain to him about her days. She'd valued his opinion as someone good at his job, seasoned and sensible, with a wit that snuck up on her and made her pause a day later to laugh when she realised what he meant. She'd liked that about him, once upon a time. She'd thought she knew him quite well.

Ji-an is not the only one he has fooled. It is that he is particularly clever, and was not trying very hard because no-one would ever think to connect Lee Joon-ho with Lee Joon-young, and it made it seem it all very natural that a medical examiner would be quite so observant. He never hid that about him, the observation, but neither did he tell her what all that watching really meant. That's the wonder of it all, how little he hid, how much he used her goodwill against her to create a picture of a good, diligent man. Perhaps he enjoyed that. She did too, back then.

"That's how it is," she tells Min. "This isn't an ultimatum or anything like that. I'm not going to make you decide today, and it's not as though I have any power to do anything to you right now, because there's no evidence and there's nothing we can use that isn't circumstantial. But there is a deadline. You feel it, right? It's getting harder for all of you, right?"

"I understand," and he's still wearing that vulnerability, open the way an unzipped body bag is open, open like the shallow mess that was the grave of her father's remains. That look and Hyun's tears sticking her shirt to her bra strap galvanise her certainties as to what she should do next.

"Look after him," she tells him, and pats his knee. "I have things to do. I'll wash up."

It won't do to face Lee Joon-young wearing Hyun's pain over his brother. The only tears she wants Lee Joon-young to see are the ones he caused himself, and those … there's more than enough of those. He should know how many. He should know what she's going to do about it, and what she won't do. He should know.

"Detective Cha," Min says.

Ji-an shakes her head. She won't be talked out of this, and he doesn't care enough to try, and that's fine. It's the way it is for now. "Look after your brother."


End file.
